Mines placed out at sea typically are configured to detect a particular stimulus supplied by an ocean going vessel in order to detonate a large explosive warhead for the purpose of sinking or incapacitating the vessel. Mine fields placed in the littoral regions of the world are used for offensive and defensive purposes. Offensively, placement of mines in a littoral region can destroy an enemy entering a mine field and/or limit the enemy maneuverability. Defensively, a littoral-region mine field can keep an enemy from attacking through a certain region.
Currently, underwater mines are placed by aircraft. Placement precision is generally not very good and results in placement errors of hundreds of yards. The higher the altitude of the aircraft when the mine is released, the greater the placement error will be. Thus, in terms of mine placement in littoral regions, aircraft sometimes have to come precariously close to an enemy shore which can result in nullifying a covert mission and/or allow the enemy to target and fire upon the aircraft.
In addition to placement problems, mines do not possess the ability to be remotely controlled in an efficient fashion from a safe location. Rather, underwater mines are pre-programmed to respond to seismic, pressure, acoustic and/or magnetic influences to yield detonation. Some efforts are underway to try to remotely command and control mines by use of acoustic signals. However, acoustic signals propagated through water for mine control can be quite unreliable especially in shallow and very shallow water regimes where high surface and bottom reverberation losses exist. Acoustic control can also be negated by the presence of air bubbles, ambient and man-made acoustic noise in the water near the receiver. Acoustic communications through water is further greatly affected by the multipaths, thermoclines and echoes from other sonar sources in the area.
Finally, although underwater mines are covert once located, this capability is not currently exploited. That is, mines are not operated as an intelligence gathering post that detects, for example, the number of vessels traversing an area, environmental conditions, etc., and reports back to a remote station.